What a welcome we have this month: to our three new priests. Father Philip Carr, Father Anthony Kelly and Father Carl Mugan were ordained by Archbishop Malcolm in the Metropolitan Cathedral on Saturday 7 July. Our main feature has more details of the day and offers an opportunity to get to know our new priests a little better. All three of them studied at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome where Canon Philip Gillespie is the Rector, it was truly a wonderful day for the people of the archdiocese.

As I write our pilgrims are in Lourdes on the annual pilgrimage. It is not very many years ago that the pilgrimage left Liverpool and virtually nothing was heard of them until they returned a week later. Things are very different now though with our modern means of communication and we can follow daily the events of the pilgrimage, largely through social media. It is always a great joy to witness the work of our young people who, after a 24-hour coach journey, are immediately hard at work helping the assisted pilgrims.

They are truly an inspiration to us all and it is wonderful to be able to join them in prayer at this time.